A beautiful bluebird Saturday in Panorama

Location: Panorama, British Columbia, Canada

Panorama has to be one of the best kept secrets of the Canadian Rockies. This place is great. I arrived last night late after driving from the airport in Calgary. My flight was uneventful (or rather, I wouldn’t know because I slept through it) and the drive was mostly just annoying. It was snowing rather heavily the entire way (about 300 km) so I spent most of the way stuck behind a semi-truck which continually splashed nasty snow all over my windshield. There was no other option as the only plowed lane was the far right and there was no real way to pass. But it was all worth it, as I was greeted in Pano by Dan and his roommates who were so friendly and eager to get to the bar – which was perfect, because I was as well.
We went to a bar that was about as close to the house as LB Pizza Co (for those who get the reference) and it was great fun to meet all of Dan’s friends (he does a decent job picking them!)

This morning started too early for me, but probably just at the right time. We woke up and strapped on our gear and headed straight to the mountain. It was the most perfect bluebird day for skiing that I think I have ever seen. The temperature was about -8C, the sun was out (not a cloud in the sky) and the mountain got dumped with about 40cm of powder overnight. Some of the big bowls and ridges were closed early morning so we headed down the face for a warm up (HA! If you could call it that). Dan was determined to get up to the ridge (a series of double blacks requiring a short hike and not something I wanted to try first thing in the morning after having not skied in over a year) as soon as we heard they were open but I was determined not to die today, so I forced him to give me some single diamonds (and a trip to the liquor store for some peppermint schnapps) before I tackled the big gun.

But in the end, Dan won. And thank god. I’ve skied ridges on other mountains before, but most of them require at least an hour hike and are rather short. This was neither of those. We hiked for less than 10 minutes before we reached our run but we didn’t go far. The powder was so deep that every other step I was waist deep in fresh goodness. It was fun the first time it happened but when I was suddenly standing on a bank of snow 3 full feet below me, I got a little perturbed. Once we stuck our skies back on, we cruised down and amazing run called B1 and were one of the firsts of the day to do so. There were hardly any treads and it was easy to pave our own way. The powder was fresh and light and the run was littered with trees but not too tightly packed to make me nervous. The best part of this run was that it lasted for a solid hour. We weaved in and out and in and out and crossed over to other runs and back into our little man-made half-pipe. It was beautiful. I was just about to say the best part of this run was… but I realized I already used that line, so I’ll say this was the second best part. I didn’t see another person the entire time. It was just Dan, Julia and I and we made sure we covered the whole area.

As soon as we made it to the bottom though, I felt like I may fall into pieces. I was so exhausted and my body was not exactly pleased with me. So I promised Dan a couple more runs, and then checked off the mountain at about 2:30 and grabbed a bite to eat where Emma works down at the main lodge.

The rest of the evening has been spent lying around doing mostly nothing. We cooked some honey garlic chicken wings for dinner (or rather Amy did) and some mashed potatoes (my contribution) and rice (best recipe I’ve found – thanks Sue Anne!). We had a nice little family dinner and now we’re waiting for Dan to get off work so we can head out to the bars!

XOXO

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